The honey at the top is from an June draw. I think it’s lighter color reflects that it was newly made in the spring from the spring nectar flow. The darker, thicker honey on the bottom, was from an earlier spring draw and I think is from a frame of overwintered honey. Or perhaps it was just made by the bees from different plants. Both honeys were from the same bees in the same location. Here in Rancho Santa Fe, California, there are many different flowers blooming at different times. They result in vastly different looking and tasting honeys.
January 23rd. That’s a record for early honey draw at Golden Glow Gardens. No doubt the three capped frames in Hive One’s honey super were a result of having left the bees alone ever since we did a 1-2 frame draw in Spring 2021 and the bees were then robbed of all the rest of their stores.
Looking into the side window I was met with a welcome sight of tons of bees working to fill and cap the outermost frame. There were so many bees, I couldn’t see past them to check how much of this frame was capped.
I caught glimpses of glistening in some cells which tells me the cells are filling with honey, but not yet capped. I’ll definitely leave this frame for the bees to keep working on.
Here is a picture of the honey frames I’m going to harvest seen from the Flow Hive’s back window.
The honey had overwintered and was dark reddish amber in color and delicious with a richness of flavor different from the light spring honey I expect we’ll be drawing in a few months. Can’t wait to see what the bees refill these frames with to compare.
This time, I took two frames of honey and I’ll be keeping vigil closely over the next few days to be sure no robbing takes place.
I believe the reason robbing is more common after a flow hive draw is that honey leaks and pools at the bottom of the honey hive after the draw. Until this gets cleaned up by the bees, it attracts predators.
Speaking of which, during my flow hive inspection, I noticed a lot of ants. While ants aren’t supposed to be harmful to a healthy hive, I am going back to the apiary tomorrow and coating the legs of the bee stand with tanglefoot to keep ants from climbing from the ground to the hives.
This weekend, I also spread diamataceous earth around the base of the bee stand. That also should help keep ants at bay. My original purpose of spreading the diamataceous earth was to repel hive beetles, but all the better if it serves two purposes.
I’m watching helplessly as still-alive bees push hundreds of dead or dying bees out of the hive. By the telltale protruding tongue, it’s clear that these bees were poisoned. The poison no doubt was a pesticide or chemical some neighbor sprayed on their landscape.
Our response to the poisoning was to help the hive by adding a feeder and sugar syrup to give the remaining bees more nutritional support (and save their energy for cleaning up the hive and making more brood over sending bees out to bring in pollen or nectar); sweep away dead bees from the entrance as soon as the bees bring them out of the hive (so they don’t have to expend extra energy to then drag them to the edge of the landing board and over the side); and go into the hive and sweep out as many dead bees from the bottom of the hive as we can.
Bees are amazingly resilient! A day or two after the poisoning and initial die-off, the hive is thriving again. There are no further dead bees and although the number of bees seems to be very strong. What looked upsetting when I first saw dead bees did not significantly weaken the hive. Fortunately, it’s early spring and there is a lot of food in the blooming flowers and trees. The hive seems no worse for the die-off. I will keep a close eye on the hive, but I feel fairly confident that it will make it. I’ll report more if anything changes.
